Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was a brilliant astrophysicist. I met him once in Delhi at a friend's house. When his obituary appeared in The Times (London), I was working on the problem of defining a present inside a black hole, which would link up with the present outside. (Time coordinates are no use, because they go through an infinite value at the horizon of the black hole.) Having at my side Chandrasekhar's book, The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (Oxford & New York, 1983), from which some of the information in the notes is taken, I was moved to compose these Sanskrit lines as a tribute. Even my amateur effort includes some play on words. The metre is unusually long, otherwise the style is based on the Purânas. I hope the Sanskrit-knowing public will enjoy it.
Those who know about these things tell us that Hawking dealt with the
radiating black hole and Penrose with the development of black holes. Kerr
treated the rotating black hole and Reissner the electrically charged black
hole. Newman studied the general black hole, and Stone introduced the
present in black holes. However, it is recognised that when it comes to the
art of mathematical calculations about black holes, the gem is Chandrasekhar.
---- These are the names of some particular writers on black holes.
The English translation is based on equivalent concepts.
Kâlachidram: my translation of 'black hole'. (Kâlachidram also means 'a fissure in time', reminding us of wormholes.)
Hawking: Stephen W. Hawking, who showed that radiation can escape from a black hole.
Penrose: Roger Penrose, who proved that a collapsing star must produce a black hole.
Kerr: R. P. Kerr. The derivation of this solution was given by Kerr and A. Schild.
Reissner: H. Reissner. His solution was independently derived by G. Nordström.
Newman: E. T. Newman and others obtained what is usually called the Kerr-Newman solution, describing a charged, rotating black hole.
Stone: All I did was to show that it is possible to have a continuous present which crosses the horizon(s) of a black hole. (In this theory a present is a spacelike hypersurface in space-time. The idea is described under Philosophy.)
Somabhushana: a synonym of candrasekhara, 'having the moon as gem'.
Last updated: 04 January 2005